Dance Commentary and Reviews by Heather Desaulniers, freelance dance critic, former dancer and choreographer, PhD in dance history.

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Experience 2.0

Arts & Above

Experience 2.0

Dance Mission Theater,
San Francisco

July 10th,
2015

To be a successful
creative team, the players must work and evolve together. But it cannot only be
about the collective. Each individual must concurrently seek personal
expression and growth, in concert with their contribution to the group’s
activities. Kate Jordan and Bruno Augusto, who together make up Arts &
Above, have constructed a program that allows the audience to glimpse into both
sides of the artistic process: solo work and partnership. Experience 2.0 begins with a set of performance art solos in which
each artist makes their own statement: Augusto in AngolanAmerican and Jordan in Build.
Closing the evening is CoHere, a
contemporary dance duet where, as the title suggests, two parts of the same
whole cling together.

Upon entering the Dance
Mission Theater performance space, a video was already in

Bruno Augusto in AngolanAmericanPhoto: Chani Bockwinkel

process. Some kind of
vehicle was traveling down roadways, pathways and highways and we were watching
the route from its perspective. Instantly, the notion of a journey was present
in the room, even before AngolanAmerican
formally begun. Augusto slowly moved onto the stage and a dual presence emerged
– he was physically in the space and his projected shadow also became part of
the video installation. Unfortunately, I was only able to see the last third of
this solo, once the moving videography had stopped. This was not a fault of the
piece. It’s just that this type of video causes motion sickness for me, so I
could only look at the action onstage for a few seconds at a time before
needing to look away. But even in those short viewing spans, the depth of AngolanAmerican still came through. What
I could see was a profoundly personal journey. One section found Augusto
constantly changing hats, putting on different ones and in different orders.
This felt like a comment on revolving circumstances as well as indicating the
non-linear nature of most journeys. And the juxtaposition of the shadow and the
real person captivated; revealing our disconnected-ness with reality and
perception.

Build
was a different kind of journey, yet just as personal. Jordan pushed towers of
green milk crates into the space, and then violently knocked three of them down.
Next, she proceeded to construct new columns and used them as platforms for
physical activity – walking, running, jumping, crawling, sliding, sitting and
balancing. So the structures really became functional; facilitators of and for
movement. Build was about
constructing and deconstructing, creating and tearing down. A task, goal and
purpose-focused solo. While

Kate Jordan in BuildPhoto: Lindsey LuciveroDesign: Rob Stone

some frustration was apparent in the piece,
generally speaking, the crates didn’t look like obstacles. Instead, they were just
objects that were a part of a larger process. The possibilities in Build far outweighed the constraints,
and the final structure was an impressively tall tower, requiring attention,
diligence, confidence and palpable intensity.

A short, intimate duet,
Jordan and Augusto joined forces for the final work of the evening, CoHere. By far, the danc-iest piece on
the Experience 2.0 program.
Narratively, CoHere tackled care and
dignity, though certainly in a deconstructed manner of speaking. And
structurally, the work examined unity. To both of these ends, the choreography
found the pair clinging to one another for support, for protection and for
comfort. This was present in walking motifs as well as in catching and releasing
sequences. But at the same time, there were also moments where the desire to
break away and exert one’s own authority was at play. This was particularly
apparent in one dynamic repeated phrase. With increasing speed and force, each
dancer continually ran, fell and rolled away from the other.